MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy

Supplement to Chapter Four,
			      SECTION I[1][2]

From What Angle Did N. G. Chernyshevsky Criticise Kantianism?

Inthe first section of Chapter IV we showed in detail that
	the materialists have been criticising Kant from a standpoint
	diametrically opposite to that from which Mach and Avenarius
	criticise him. It would not be superfluous to add here, albeit
	briefly, an indication of the epistemological position held by
	the great Russian Hegelian and materialist,
	N. G. Chernyshevsky.

Shortlyafter Albrecht Rau, the German disciple of Feuerbach,
	had published his criticism of Kant, the great Russian writer
	N. G. Chernyshevsky, who was also a disciple of Feuerbach,
	first attempted an explicit statement of his attitude towards
	both Feuerbach and Kant. N. G. Chernyshevsky had appeared in
	Russian literature as a follower of Feuerbach as early as the
	’fifties, but our censorship did not allow him even to mention
	Feuerbach’s name. In 1888, in the preface to the projected
	third edition of hisThe Aesthetic Relation of Art to
	Reality,N. G. Chernyshevsky attempted to allude directly
	to Feuerbach, but in 1888 too the censor refused to allow even
	a mere reference to Feuerbach! It was not until 1906 that the
	preface saw the light (see N. G. Chernyshevsky,Collected
	Works,Vol. X, Part II, pp. 190-97). In this preface
	N. G. Chernyshevsky devotes half a page to criticising Kant
	and the scientists who follow Kant in their philosophical
	conclusions.

Hereis the excellent argument given by Chernyshevsky in 1888:

“Naturalscientists who imagine themselves to be builders of
	all-embracing theories are really disciples, and usually poor
	disciples, of the ancient thinkers who evolved the
	metaphysical systems, usually thinkers whose systems had
	already been partially destroyed by Schelling and finally
	destroyed by Hegel. One need only point out that the majority
	of the natural scientists who endeavour to construct broad
	theories of the laws of operation of human thought only repeat
	Kant’s metaphysical theory regarding the subjectivity of our
	knowledge. . . .”
(For the benefit of the Russian
	Machians who manage to muddle everything, let us say that
	Chernyshevsky is below Engels in so far as in his terminology
	he confuses the opposition between materialism and idealism
	with the opposition between metaphysical thought and
	dialectical thought; but Chernyshevsky is entirely on Engels’
	level in so far as he takes Kant to task not for realism, but
	for agnosticism and subjectivism, not for recognition of the
	“thing-in-itself,” but for inability to derive our
	knowledge from this objective source.) “. . . they argue
	from Kant’s words that the forms of our sense-perception have
	no resemblance to the forms of the actual existence of
	objects. . . .”
(For the benefit of the Russian Machians
	who manage to muddle everything, let us say that
	Chernyshevsky’s criticism of Kant is the diametrical opposite
	of the criticism of Kant by Avenarius, Mach and the
	immanentists, because for Chernyshevsky, as for every
	materialist, the forms of our sense-perception do resemble the
	form of the
	actual—i.e. objectively-real—existence of
	objects.) “. . . that, therefore, really existing
	objects, their real qualities, and the real relations between
	them are unknowable to us. . . .”
(For the benefit of
	the Russian Machians who manage to muddle everything, let us
	say that for Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, objects,
	or to use Kant’s ornate language,
	“things-in-themselves,”reallyexist and
	arefullyknowable to us, knowable in their
	existence, their qualities and the real relations between
	them.) “. . . and if they were knowable they could not
	be the object of our thought, which shapes all the material of
	knowledge into forms totally different from the forms ofactual existence, that, moreover, the very laws of thought
	have only a subjective significance. . . .”
(For the
	benefit of the Machian muddlers, let us say that for
	Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, the laws of thought
	have not merely a subjective significance; in other words, the
	laws of thought reflect the forms of actual existence of
	objects, fully resemble, and do not differ from, these forms.)
	“. . . that in reality there is nothing corresponding
	to what appears to us to be the connection of cause and
	effect, for there is neither antecedent nor subsequent,
	neither whole nor parts, and so on and so forth. . . .”
(For the benefit of the Machian muddlers, let us say that for
	Chernyshevsky, as for every materialist, there does exist in
	reality what appears to us to be the connection between cause
	and effect, there is objective causality or natural
	necessity.) “. . . When natural scientists stop uttering
	such and similar metaphysical nonsense, they will be capable
	of working out, and probably will work out, on the basis of
	science, a system of concepts more exact and complete than
	those propounded by Feuerbach. . . .”
(For the benefit
	of the Machian muddlers, let us say that Chernyshevsky regards
	as metaphysical nonsensealldeviations from
	materialism, both in the direction of idealism and in the
	direction of agnosticism.) “. . . But meanwhile, the
	best statement of the scientific concepts of the so-called
	fundamental problems of man’s inquisitiveness remains that
	made by Feuerbach” (pp. 195–96). By the fundamental
	problems of man’s inquisitiveness Chernyshevsky means what in
	modern language are known as the fundamental problems of the
	theory of knowledge, or epistemology. Chernyshevsky is the
	only really great Russian writer who, from the ’fifties until
	1888, was able to keep on the level of an integral
	philosophical materialism and who spurned the wretched
	nonsense of the Neo-Kantians, positivists, Machians and other
	muddleheads. But Chernyshevsky did not succeed in rising, or,
	rather, owing to the backwardness of Russian life, was unable
	to rise, to the level of the dialectical materialism of Marx
	and Engels.

[1]Seepp. 194–205 of this volume.—Ed.

[2]Themanuscript of the “Supplement to Chapter Four, Section 1,‘From What Angle Did N. G. Chernyshevsky Criticise Kantianism?’\thinspace”
was sent by Lenin to A. I. Ulyanova-Yelizarova in the second half of March,
when the book was already in the press.  In a letter to his sister dated
March 10 or 11 (23 or 24), 1909, Lenin wrote in reference to this
supplement: “I am sending you a supplement. It is not worth while delaying
on account of it. But if there is time, put it at the end of the book,
after the conclusion, in small print, for instance. I regard it as
extremely important to counterpose ‘Chernyshevsky’ to the Machists.”
(Collected Works, present edition, Vol. 37, pp.419–20.)